Fact, Fictions, and the Forbidden Predictions of the Amazing Criswell

Edwin Lee Canfield

Headpress 2023

Pb, 396pp, £22.99, ISBN 9781915316004

Criswell was an early celebrity psychic with a fabulous catchphrase: “We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives.” Best remembered for opening Plan 9 from Outer Space, Criswell was a television host, vitamin peddler, syndicated newspaper columnist and frequent talk show curiosity.

Born Jeron Charles Criswell King in King Station, Indiana, his early career was spent attempting to make it on Broadway while publishing self-help books along with his wife, Myrtle. By 1940 the pair were in Los Angeles, with Myrtle remaking herself as the actress Halo Meadows, and Criswell reborn with psychic abilities.

There’s a fakeit-till-you-make-it quality to many performers, and Criswell faked extravagantly. His predictions were infamously incorrect, but that never stopped him from making another talk show appearance while claiming 87 per cent of everything he said came true. He often sounded the alarm that the world would end on 18 August 1999 – but rightly predicted Ronald Reagan would be Governor of California.

Edwin Lee Canfield’s book is more a scrapbook of photos, interview excerpts, newspaper clippings and talk show transcripts than an actual biography. One wishes for a deeper exploration of Criswell’s self-creation and self-promotion. Instead, we get years of Canfield’s Internet research and interviews slapped together more or less chronologically. Criswell completists will take heart in the information gathered, and in some ways the pulpy presentation fits its subject.

Criswell’s shtick concerned the world of tomorrow, and indeed he presaged a certain type of B-list fame that has only grown in the intervening years.

Mike Pursley

★★